CHAPTER 3RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

The purpose of this study is to identify salient aspects and relationship of implementation of storytelling and primary school students achievement in learning English language for year three students in one of the school in Ampang Valley known as SRK TAMAN KOSAS. In other words, this research is fully based and concentrates on a school in Ampang and to investigate thoroughly and in various aspects about teaching and implementing storytelling for English subject.

To achieve the objective of this paper the research instruments , namely the questionnaires, interviews and observation (Triangulation of data) used to collect the information, and the method used to validate the findings of the research project.

3 Methods

In this chapter I will describe how the present study was conducted: research

methods, setting, sample and informants (including research ethics), data collection and

analysis. Towards the end of the chapter, the studys validity, reliability and transferability

are commented upon.

3.1 Research methods

The research questions addressed in this study were as follows:

1. How is the storytelling approach perceived and used amongst L2 (English)

teachers in Ukraine?

2. How is the storytelling approach perceived and used amongst L2 teachers in

Norway?

3. What are the differences and similarities between Ukrainian and Norwegian

teachers use of storytelling and what can be learned from the Norwegian

experience?

4. Which challenges do teachers and students experience while working with

the storytelling technique and how do they deal with these challenges?

To receive answers to the research questions, I used qualitative research methods,

more specifically semi-structured interviews. According to Johnson and Christensen

(2012), qualitative research methods are well suited for studies where little is known

about the topic or phenomenon, and when one wants to discover or learn more about it

(2012:33). As was mentioned earlier, it is difficult to come by information about Ukrainian

English teachers practices and attitudes concerning the use of storytelling in language

teaching. Therefore, a qualitative approach to the issue appears sensible. It would have

been interesting to combine qualitative interviews with a statistical survey with a large

number of teachers addressed, but, due to the scope of this project, I find it necessary to

limit the study to qualitative research. Duff (2012) notes that the greatest strength of

qualitative studies is their ability to exemplify larger processes or situations in a very

accessible, concrete, immediate, and personal manner. In qualitative research, new

directions for the field may result from insights generated by the data collected. As

qualitative studies seek depth rather than breadth in its scope and analysis, its goal is not to

universalize but to particularize and then yield insights of potentially wider relevance and

theoretical significance. (Duff 2012: 96). In addition, conducting qualitative studies has

considerable practical value because only a small number of individuals and sites are

normally involved, and participants may thus be easier to recruit and permissions may be

easier to obtain than in a study with a different design for which hundreds of permissions

from institutions etc. might be required. (Duff 2012:103).

3.2 Settings and informants

The setting in this study relates to where and when the data was collected, the

informants are those individuals who provided the empirical data. In qualitative studies it is particular important to consider the kinds and the number

of participants one wishes to study closely, and the criteria for their recruitment and

selection. (Duff 2012:105). In my study it was important to include several informants

representing both Ukraine and Norway, as one of the research aims was to compare the

experiences of the teachers. As I saw it, there were clear conditions and criteria for

choosing the informants. The main focus of the study was children in the pre-reading

period, and as a result, I was interested in recruiting informants who teach English to

children in the last years of kindergarten and early in school, independent of gender or age.

Using my own and my supervisors contacts, I approached five schools and one

kindergarten, one private and two public schools in Ukraine, one public school, one special

needs school and one private kindergarten in Norway. There were six informants, five

female teachers and one male teacher. The six participants in this study are between 23 and

65 years old and their amount of experience as teachers of English varied from one to

forty-five years (tab.2The goal of my research was not to generalize from a representative sample, but to

gain a deeper insight into the subject through in-depth talks with a few teachers about the

nature of the phenomenon. The focus of my study was children in the pre-reading period,

and the type of the educational institution was of less relevance. In a discussion with my

supervisor it was decided to add informants who work at other types of educational

institutions than ordinary primary school to widen the research and get a wider range of

children. We managed to secure an interview with a teacher at one of the very few

kindergartens where they teach English, and also at a unique school where the classes for

historical reasons consist of both children whose intellectual development has been normal,

and others, whose intellectual age require pre-school type teaching.

3.3 Research ethics

As there are ethical aspects involved in interview research, the research process must

rely on research ethics. Kvale and Brinkmann (2010) suggest the following areas to be

taken into account: informed consent, confidentiality, potential consequences and the

researchers role.

The research participants were fully informed about the main purpose of the research

and its main design features. They were also informed that their participation was

voluntary and they could withdraw at any moment. For these purposes, each time before

interviewing I delivered a short oral introduction on my project and the interview

procedure itself.

To ensure the anonymity of the teachers, they have been assigned aliases: Anne,

Therese and Jessica from Norway and Viktor, Marina and Nina from Ukraine.

The next ethical consideration is the researchers responsibility to evaluate whether

the project might lead to negative consequences for the informants in relation both to their

participation in the study and to the researchers interpretation of the data. To make sure I

was not misinterpreting the answers, I repeated them to the informants during the

interview, checking that I had understood correctly, and at the same time giving them the

opportunity to add other comments.

The researchers role is to conduct the interviews competently, ask good follow-up

questions and generally be able to lead informants to speak freely on the topic of interest.

Testing the questions on my fellow students and colleagues prior to interviews and

preliminary practice helped me feel comfortable with the interview guide and have more

focus on the informants.According to the regulations, when conducting research with informants, the project

must be approved by the Norwegian Social Science Data Service (NSD). We applied to the

NSD for approval to conduct the study and received the answer that the project was not

considered subject to notification.

3.4 Collecting data

For research purposes I decided to conduct face-to-face interviews with three English

teachers in primary school in Ukraine and three English teachers in primary school in

Norway. For my project I prepared semi-structured interviews, which ask open-ended

questions of the interviewee (Johnson and Christensen 2012). As is the norm for semistructured

interviews, topics and questions were prepared beforehand by making an

interview guide (see appendix 1). This allowed me to adjust the questions for each

interview situation, and the use of the guide made sure that all the important topics were

discussed during the interview.

Each interview began with some opening questions about the teachers background

in terms of working experience and education. This information is relevant for the later

analysis, as I am interested in looking for a correlation between the teachers background

and their attitude towards the storytelling method. Considerable attention was paid to

general questions about teaching methods and materials used in the classroom and the

teachers experience with them. This approach provided the interviewees with an

opportunity to talk spontaneously about the positive and negative aspects of the different

techniques they use. As the overreaching aim of my study is to investigate the need for

new teaching materials, many of the questions were directed specifically at any drawbacks

and inconveniences the teachers might experience with the existing materials and at a

discussion of what could be improved.

The use of a digital recorder is undoubtedly the most common method of recording

interview data because it has the obvious advantage of preserving the entire verbal part of

the interview for later analysis. The main drawbacks with recording are the possible

malfunctioning of equipment and that some respondents may be nervous to talk while

being recorded. As my methodology was pilot-tested before the main study, I had an

Introduction and Problem Statement

According to Martin Rayala, art, media and design consultant for the Department of

Public Instruction (2004), There are seven ways to communicate information, and words and

numbers are only two of them. The other five are: movement, sound, images, objects, and

spaces. (p. 2)

While traditionally in higher educational settings learning is conducted through

instructionalism, a curriculum based on a single means of communication; there are cognitive

benefits to learning through a visual medium.

According to James S. Catteralls essay, The Arts and the Transfer of Learning (2002),

how we experience information is directly proportional to how we learn information. Thus by

learning through the five other methods of communication, one can stimulate other parts of the

brain that coincide with how we learn other information.

For example hearing a single musical note for the first time has substantial impact on the

brain. It can cause multiple reactions such as memory, linguistic and rational responses and/or

autonomous reactions.

Within higher educational settings students today have access to a vast array of

technologies that can assist in communicating through a visual medium. Technologies like video,

blogs, and websites, offer students countless resources for both learning and creation

Unfortunately students have too little knowledge of available tools and methodologies

that technology can offer. Traditionally both educators and students have been slow to

incorporate new technologies into the classrooms. Educators seem content with using technology

for administrative purposes as opposed to actual integration to help facilitate the process of

learning. While students dont seem to realize any other means of presenting a project than

through boring mundane slide presentations.

Pamela Harris Lawton recognizes that traditional learning and success has been

associated with the logical analytical thinking associated with the left-brain is no longer

sufficient in a society that communicates through visual mediums. Rather the abilities associated

with right-brain thinking, artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture and pursuing the

transcendent, (p.10) is more relevant in todays society.

One of the problems is that the higher educational setting is designed through a

traditional means of students attending a lecture twice a week for a few hours, asked to read and

memorize a textbook, then graded based on performance on a mid-term and final, leaving the

student unengaged, bored, and not learning to their fullest potential.

Students want to be engaged and want to learn. But in order for them to do this they need

to care about what they are learning. Visual communication through technology and creation

enables students to care about what they are producing, thus having a stronger impact on the

students understanding of content.

There are many technologies available to students that can help enhance student learning.

Some examples of these technologies and how they help student learning are as follows:

Blogs are online journals, or news feeds, that allow for instant publishing, which

can include texts and graphics, and is readily available to the world. It allows for

feedback, and is a unique way for individuals to represent themselves online.

Additional benefits include student literacy, linguistic development, and creative

expression

Digital Stories are the use of digital media that tells a story, usually through video.

Students form a bond to what they are learning through the aspect of creation,

changing a students mentality from having to learn, to wanting to learn.

Wikis are online documents that can be edited repeatedly and divided into sections

based on content. Students learn collaboration, editing skills, organization skills, and

exposure to the idea of never having a finished product.

Project Purpose and Improvement Goals

The purpose of this project is to help students communicate more effectively visually by

becoming more proficient and familiar with alternative methodologies that technology offers, in

addition to transitioning students to think, outside the box, helping to foster creativity and

imagination in their learning process.

Key Questions and Tasks

I plan to improve student learning by creating an experimental class at the University of

Delaware that helps students by focusing on projects and assignments that incorporate creative

visual learning with technology. Throughout this process I will measure my findings based on

student performance both within the class, and how they continue to use the skills acquired.

Following are a set of key questions I will keep in mind throughout this process. These

prompts suggest areas I need to explore, and develop to delve into a more effective learning

environment.

What are the traditional means of instructionalism?

-Uniform Learning

-Teacher Control

-Teacher as Expert

-Standard Assessment

-Knowledge in Lead

-Coverage

-Learning by Absorption

-Just in Case Learning

Why do students tend to work in traditional means of instructionalism?

-Examine traditional means of instructionalism and the cognitive impact on students learning

abilities.

What are the benefits of creative visual learning?

-Constructionist method i.e. learning by creation suggests students learn best when they are

actively engaged in creating something they care about.

How does technology offer solutions in creative learning

Integrating storytelling objectives in daily teaching Teaching objectives of storytelling skills training in the curriculumSuggested daily class activities

1. To help students feel at ease and minimize their stage fright when speaking to others- confidence building

c) Story warmers relax, group dynamics, trust-building.

2. To encourage students to select appropriate aids to supplement their self-expression

a)

Use puppets, any relevant objects, students own picture book,

Story time hat, scarf to draw attention of audience

3. To help students to learn to visualize images when learning a story

f)

Stick puppets to instruct change of voice of characters

Improvisations

Play narrator- dramatize story moments

Use TV episodes, comic books

4. To help students to empathize with others, and to show emotion and mood with body language

g)

Role play before a full length mirror

A story of gesture- e.g. from a happy girl to an old woman who is coughing, when you find something in a box and feel surprised,..

5. To encourage students to have spontaneous oral production with emphasis on coherence, and the mood of the story

b)

On the ball (Whoever gets a ball has to speak on a topic)

Continuous story (using Powerpoint, cue cards)

Impromptu stories/speech (e.g. If there is no sun tomorrow)

One-minute morning speech

Retelling: Change ideas, feelings, values of characters: a hero into a heroine, foolish behaviour into brave behaviour; expanding or reducing the story; combining 2 stories, improving the story- change the sequence of events.(All these can be drawn from stories in textbooks, or the short stories in Reading Workshops).

6. To encourage students to have self expression with emphasis on the use of body language, manipulation of setting, to make a lively and communicative presentation

h)

More drama skills practice

Play charades#

7. To encourage students to speak at a moderate pace, have clear enunciation, and pay attention to the following phonetic features: Consonant clusters, stress, linkage, single word and phrases

d)

Phonics workshop

Tongue twisters

Sound patterns practice

Retell a story with a change of words- original words into all words with a particular consonant cluster, vowel..

Singing

8. A second target after pronunciationTo encourage students to express other shades of meaning of a message through a change of stress, and tones

e)

A game to contribute a sent to a story-Fortunately (rising to show positive aspect), unfortunately (fall to show negative aspect)

Games to elicit the use of question types (rise for questing for information, fall for questing for agreement of the content; and listing examples Do you want tea, coffee or Horlick? (rise> rise> rise> fall) Yes/No questions and Wh- questions; question tags.

(All these may be practice using dialogues at lower primary level)

9. To develop students ability to pay attention to the coherence in speech delivery and to be able to memorize chunks of utterance effectively.

I)

Simon says (memory game)

Chinese Whispers (memory game)

Group picture story making

Add-a-line story making

3-part flow chart story, eight-box flow chart

Clothes line story making- clip some pictures on a clothes line in the classroom. Ask groups to sequence them to make a story from time to time.

Recount : students own experience-releasers e.g. a toy of mine, a particular time when I was ill.

Ambiguous pictures- draw a stick person and a rectangle. Students to guess what it is about, and what will happen next. Teacher then draws the next bit of clues to encourage guessing.

2.7. EVALUATION SHEET Name of activity

Skills practised

Level of activity

Communication:

- Information gap

- Choice

- feedback

Preparation Time

Comments

Realisation Time

learnt/revised things

Appropriate (Would you use it?)